Yes, linguistically pop and opera almost seem made for one another — there really is no easier term on the lips or the ears than popera.

But the two actual worlds — the music, the culture, the audiences — is a difficult one to bridge.

Which is why the continued success of the Simon Cowell concocted classical crossover quartet Il Divo remains an astounding feat.

Now 13 years and nine albums in, the Award-winning, 30-plus-million-selling international foursome of Urs Bühler, Carlos Marín, Sébastien Izambard and David Miller shows no signs of letting up, no signs of giving up the title of most popular popera act out there.

Prior to Il Divo’s Tuesday night Jubilee Auditorium performance in support of their latest album Amor & Pasion, the Herald spoke with American tenor Miller.

Q: It sounds like this show is quite the workout for the four of you?

A: It certainly is. In a way, it’s the most challenging thing we’ve ever attempted in 12 years of being together because there’s so many new elements that we’ve decided to put in … We’ve got us on stage playing instruments, we’ve got dancers in the show where we dance with them part of the time, they do routines on their own part of the time, we’re doing solo moments which we’ve never done before. And it’s taking it not the next level but the next three levels. It’s a lot of fun from that standpoint, it’s more challenging, which for me, I like a challenge, so it’s right up my alley. For me, it’s like, “Bring it on!”

Q: What instrument do you play?

A: I play (laughs), probably the most challenging of the instruments, I play the Argentinean bandoneon, which is like an accordion, but an accordion has buttons on one side that create the harmonic sonorities and it’s got a keyboard on the other side, so it’s like playing a piano only upright and only one-handed. Whereas the bandoneon is only buttons and they’re not labelled and there’s no order, literally no particular order, and if you push a button when you’re pulling it open it’s one note and when you push it closed it plays a different note, and there’s no rhyme or reason as to which notes change by how much … I literally had to learn 180 different note placements in order to do the songs we’re doing.

Looking back on it it was hard. I really couldn’t use a teacher, I’m self-taught at it. I found as many YouTube videos as I could find, which was three, because there are not a lot of bandoneonistas out there … Every day I probably dedicated about two hours to it from the start of rehearsals until opening night. And it was the most nerve-racking thing I’ve ever done, but, no risk no reward.

Q: Not to say you’re going to step away from Il Divo, but I know you still do some opera on the side — does that help ground you?

A: It does, it absolutely does. Like you said, I have no intention of leaving the band but I personally have to figure out how to balance this a little bit better. I basically left a 15-year career and a trajectory and where I thought I was going in life and my music to come and do an experiment, which, by all intents and purposes really should have only lasted about three to five years. And that it caught on like wild fire and it’s still growing in certain countries is astounding to everybody, record company included. Nobody predicted that it would go like this. Obviously the record company heard what we could do and they saw dollar signs, but it’s one thing as a marketing exercise, it’s another thing when people experience it and go, “I like that. That feels right, that feels good.” …

But it’s gotten to the point now (with Il Divo) where I have to wear in-ear monitors because of certain challenges in terms of the sonorities of how much is it’s amplified, and how much we get back. In order for us to be able to hear anything proper we would have to have either speakers and wedges pointed back towards us and in order to be get up over the amount of sound that comes out of our Marshall stack that’s hanging from the ceiling, it has to be so loud that it causes tinnitus in my ears. So in order to cancel that out, now I have to go on in-ears. Now I’m in my own secluded bubble and it’s not acoustic, I don’t feel myself in space, I don’t feel my instrument any more. So doing things where I’m just in an acoustic environment, it is grounding, it’s part of why I still take voice lessons …

But, yeah, I’m actively looking at trying to figure out how to balance in more of my life’s work into this mix.

Q: So when you finally get off the road this year you’ll try and find something else, you’ll try and get back into that world?

A: It’s a funny thing because I’ve been gone for so long I’m actually going to have to go back into the audition circuit. Because at this point the people who run the opera companies are not the same people who were running the opera companies when I was in the opera world. All of these people who don’t know me other than (as) that guy from that pop group … I have to go through the auditions again, I have to convince everybody, “Yes, I’m still actually an opera singer.” (Laughs) It’s a whole big, huge thing.

Q: Do you get a sense that people in the opera world look down on what you do in Il Divo?

A: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I actually used to be one of those people. My big project before getting into Il Divo I was in Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme on Broadway and that was the only opera that’s gone to Broadway and I was in it for over a year and I got to work with Baz Luhrmann, who is an absolute genius. What he was able to do (in Moulin Rouge) taking Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman who are non-singers and just taking their natural raw emotive expression and translate it into making tone. And with the context of the emotions and with the context of storyline he was able to prove that it doesn’t take that much (vocal talent). They were really good, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not trained singers …

So I was in that camp and he helped me see that the point of opera is not about vocal masturbation — he didn’t say that; I say that now — but it’s not about vocal masturbation where you’re just like, “Look at me and look at my voice and how impressive.” All that does is help an audience disconnect. The point of opera is to reach people. The point is not to blow them back into their seats, it’s to pull them out of their seats. And if I hadn’t gone through that experience I never even would have auditioned for Il Divo. But it was because of that experience that I was open to, “Well, what else might I be able to do with my voice? I’ve been doing opera for 15 years, so what else could I do?” So this audition came along and I was like, “OK, sure, I’ll give it a try, I’ll see what I can do. Pop music? Huh? I don’t know what you’re going to use my opera voice for, but at least I’ll try it.”

And in doing that we created something very magical, very special but the opera world still goes, “Pfft. But it’s still not opera.” …

You can see their standpoint and you can see my standpoint and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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